Sunday, March 8, 2015

A natural predator is harmed by congressional delisting

Associated Press

The level of protection that gray wolves should receive is once again being debated.

By Elizabeth Huntley

March 7, 2015

The war on wolves by political special interests is continuing in 2015, both nationwide and in Wisconsin.

Flash back to 2012.

Within hours of U.S. Fish &
Wildlife's decision to delist the gray wolf from the Endangered Species
Act in Wisconsin, legislators and Gov. Scott Walker signed off on one of
the most extreme wolf hunting bills ever created by any state,
Wisconsin Act 169.

Promoted by a small faction of powerful
lobbying groups and eerily reminiscent of government policies written
more than 100 years ago intended to wipe wolves off the map, Act 169
permitted a four-and-a-half month killing season that coincided with
wolves' mating and denning season; allowed for unlimited trapping and,
most disturbing, allowed the use of dogs to train on and hunt wolves,
despite a 2013 poll of 625 registered Wisconsin voters that found more
than 80% opposed the practice. Many citizens felt it amounted to
state-sanctioned dog fighting.
Things got even worse for wolves in Wisconsin in 2014.

That's when the 4th District state Court of Appeals overturned a stay on the training of dogs on wolves.
Packs of dogs — unregulated — could now harass and chase wolves year
round despite the lack of research on the effects of this controversial
practice.

In a matter of three years, Wisconsin has
lost at least 518 wolves to legalized hunting, hounding, trapping and
annual unenforced quota overkills. The public outcry over this was so
overwhelming that the state Department of Natural Resources had to
create a dedicated email and phone line to handle the volume of concerns
that flooded in. A request under the state open records law revealed
that more than 99% of the communications the DNR received during the
wolf hunt were from citizens opposed to indiscriminate trapping, the use
of dogs in training and hunting (including problems with dogs
trespassing on private property and threatening pets and farm animals),
and quota overkills.

The 518 wolves killed does not include
wolves killed at the request of livestock operators for "depredation
control" (170) or wolves killed on roadways every year (25). On top of
this, it is difficult for agency staff to estimate how many wolves are
poached. One estimate, given by Joel Trick of the Fish & Wildlife
Service, pegged that number conservatively at 100 a year.

Considering annual wolf pup mortality at
75%, the human take of wolves in Wisconsin since 2012 has been
catastrophic. In fact, six prominent wolf researchers voiced serious
concerns about insufficient state monitoring and unsustainable state
management in letters to Fish & Wildlife last fall. What took 38
years and millions of taxpayer dollars to achieve — a wolf recovery in
Wisconsin to about 825 animals (vs. 1 million white tail deer) — has
been nearly wiped out as a result of unscientific, unsustainable
management.

The mismanagement in Wisconsin and other
states contributed to the December 2014 judicial decision to restore
endangered species protections for Great Lakes wolves. Unfortunately,
Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.) and others are now advancing proposals to
statutorily remove federal protection. In other words, they want to
usurp the federal ruling. Unfortunately, any congressional rider or bill
that promotes the legislative delisting of wolves will place not only
wolves, but also the entire Endangered Species Act in jeopardy. What is
to stop Congress from statutorily delisting other species that
well-heeled developers or "special interest groups" don't believe
deserve protections?

We learned in grade school that the
Constitution created three branches of government to ensure a central
government with a system of checks and balances. Clearly, Congress would
not be acting in the best interests of citizens by trying to undermine
the federal court's decision restoring protections to Great Lakes
wolves. Lawmakers would, instead, be acting in the best interest of a
tiny minority of special interests.

This legislation, if passed, would be
disastrous for wolves — and betray the American public, which placed its
faith on the science-based principles of the Endangered Species Act. It
is urgent for citizens who care about wolves and the future of that law
to contact their senators and congressional representatives today.

Elizabeth Huntley is a member of the Sierra Club John Muir Chapter's Protecting Native Forests & Wildlife Subcommittee.

The film offers an abbreviated history of the relationship between wolves and people—told from the wolf’s perspective—from a time when they coexisted to an era in which people began to fear and exterminate the wolves.

The return of wolves to the northern Rocky Mountains has been called one of America’s greatest conservation stories. But wolves are facing new attacks by members of Congress who are gunning to remove Endangered Species Act protections before the species has recovered.

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Inescapably, the realization was being borne in upon my preconditioned mind that the centuries-old and universally accepted human concept of wolf character was a palpable lie... From this hour onward, I would go open-minded into the lupine world and learn to see and know the wolves, not for what they were supposed to be, but for what they actually were.

-Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf

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“If you look into the eyes of a wild wolf, there is something there more powerful than many humans can accept.” – Suzanne Stone